


renaissance

by iceblinks



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Falling In Love, Fluff, Love Confessions, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, tokyo skytree (character)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:48:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29832780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iceblinks/pseuds/iceblinks
Summary: Under the arched ceiling of the universe, Hajime rediscovers tranquility.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 1
Kudos: 28





	renaissance

Oikawa Tooru is eighteen when he realizes his heart has stopped falling apart. It hits him directly between the eyes halfway through a jump serve straight to hell, and Hajime watches him implode.

The ball bounces over the clean, white line, forgotten. Oikawa’s arms drop to his sides. Hajime watches him blink once, twice, three times, watches him rewrite the rules of the universe with his too-long eyelashes. This is history in the making, probably. His hands are shaking.

“Oikawa,” Hajime says. “It’s out.”

Oikawa turns. His eyes are wide and unfocused, mouth open in a barely-visible part. The universe bends for him. 

“Right,” he says hoarsely. His eyebrows knit together. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s—” Hajime frowns. “Let’s take a break.”

* * *

  
  


They’re five and six, running through the tall grass in the height of summer, and it’s not even a question that someday, they’ll take on the world together. Hajime tosses Oikawa his bug net and leaps over a rock, and then Oikawa jumps up onto it and holds the net up to the sky. Even now, he is regal; his too-loose shirt fans out behind him, its shadow bordering the soft edges of his skin.

Maybe it’s always been this way. Hajime grabs on to Oikawa’s shoulder and pushes him sideways until he can climb up too. He slips the net out of Oikawa’s hand and holds it out of reach because, at this point, he’s taller. He’d thought he’d always be taller than Oikawa. 

_“Mean,_ Iwa-chan,” Oikawa whines, shoving at his shoulder. He pistons his ankle sideways, knocking one of Hajime’s feet off of the rock. 

_“Hey!”_

Oikawa sticks out his tongue. Hajime jumps down to the ground, glaring. 

“It’s _mine,”_ he says, hands on his hips. 

“You said I could borrow it.”

“When?”

“Yesterday.”

“It’s not yesterday anymore,” Hajime says. He kicks at the rock, and Oikawa sways sideways. 

“I guess it isn’t,” Oikawa says. He jumps off of the rock, landing neatly between Hajime’s feet. He looks sad, suddenly, his nose going red in the way it always does before he starts to cry. 

“Fine,” Hajime says quickly, “you can borrow it now, I guess. Whatever.”

Oikawa’s hands tighten around the handle when he smiles at Hajime, but the melancholy in his eyes stays. Hajime pulls him forward by the elbow and hopes it’s enough. 

* * *

  
  


“I want to go somewhere, I think. Before graduation. Before anything happens to us.”

Oikawa’s water bottle dangles from his fingertips. He’s too tall to properly spread out over the tiny steps that lead to the gym, but he does so anyway. His hair is, infuriatingly, still perfectly in place. 

“Are you okay?” Hajime asks. 

“Of course I’m okay, what the hell. Why do you always act like I’m about to die on you?”

“No, I just—”

He’d seen the moment where Oikawa realized, just a second too late, that he was not a slave to time or memory. In the split second between his jump and the ball hitting his hand, Oikawa had realized something far greater than could ever be explained to the four gym walls. He had realized the value of a memory, and in doing so, had been able to make it disappear. 

“You’re so weird, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa says, lifting his water bottle to his mouth. Hajime stares at the bridge of his nose, at the light reflected off of his eyelids, at the fluid movement of his throat. 

“So what if I am,” he mumbles, kicking half-heartedly at Oikawa’s right ankle. 

* * *

  
  


Oikawa falls in love with volleyball first. Hajime watches as he grows into the sport and learns to love it on his own. How could he not, eventually? He does not know this yet, but Hajime loves desperately, with his entire heart. Volleyball was inevitable. Oikawa was inevitable. 

“Hey, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa says on their first day of middle school. His gakuran is buttoned neatly up to his chin, the collar brushing the soft line of his jaw. He flicks his hair out of his eyes. “Let’s join the volleyball team.”

How could he not, eventually.

* * *

  
  


“I’ll take you somewhere cool, don’t worry,” Oikawa promises on the walk home. “Like Hokkaido.”

“Who says I wanna go to Hokkaido?”

“Everybody wants to go to Hokkaido.”

“I wanna go to Jeju Island.”

“Oh, come on, that’s not fair! I said we’d stay domestic!”

* * *

  
  


He had never understood the allure of romance until his last year of middle school. It had always seemed far too superficial, before; besides, he would rather have spent his time with Oikawa. 

The realization does not hit him like a truck, or even a small minivan. He wakes up one day, and he understands. 

He goes to school that morning, and Oikawa tells him he looks different. Says he’s carrying himself differently. Says he looks happy. 

_And what about you?_ Hajime thinks. _What do you look like?_

“Do you wanna come over after class,” he says instead, because everything has changed and nothing has changed and the world is spinning anyway. What the hell. He’s in love. 

* * *

  
  


“We could just go to Tokyo,” Oikawa says. He runs a hand through his hair, still damp from the bath. “You know, I’ve never actually seen the Skytree.”

“Isn’t that a couples thing?”

“I dunno.” He smiles widely, tapping at Hajime’s homework with the eraser end of his pencil. “Who cares?”

“We can go, I guess,” Hajime mumbles. Beneath the low table, Oikawa’s knees knock against his. 

Oikawa points the tip of his pencil directly between Hajime’s eyes. “Good.”

“Yeah.”

Oikawa’s hand falls back to his homework. Hajime watches his eyelashes flutter when he blinks, watches the slow rise and fall of his chest. Watches his tongue dart between his open lips. 

Something has changed. Oikawa’s hands dance over the edges of his printout, smoothing the corners down. He no longer looks like he wants to throw himself into the choppiest part of a river. The river stills beneath his eternal palms. The universe takes his hands in its own. 

Before he can stop himself, Hajime says, “You look happy.”

* * *

  
  


Hajime finds him on the roof. Oikawa’s fingers are tangled in the chain-link fence, his hair blowing out dramatically around him like the scorned love interest in a movie about forgiveness. 

“You forgot your lunch,” Hajime yells over the wind. “Come back inside, it’s fucking freezing.”

“Iwa-chan,” Oikawa says. He doesn’t turn around. Hajime has to step closer in order to hear him. “I knew it was you. You have very distinctive footsteps, you know. Barbaric.”

“Shut the fuck up and get back inside.”

“Rina-chan broke up with me.”

Oikawa turns around, finally. He does not look like he will live forever. He does not look like he is asking for forgiveness. 

“Oh,” Hajime says. 

“She was right to, you know. I wasn’t in love with her.”

“Oh,” Hajime says again. 

“Hajime,” Oikawa says, and his hand drops from the fence. He steps right up to Hajime, pushing his foot between Hajime’s own. “I wasn’t in love with her.”

“Well, it’s good that you broke up, then,” Hajime says, his heart in his throat. 

“Yeah.”

 _Open your eyes,_ Hajime thinks desperately, but Oikawa never got the hang of the whole best-friend-telepathy thing, so he stays put. The universe stays firmly in place, walls winding all the way to the castle at the center. Oikawa Tooru remains unchanged. 

* * *

  
  


Two weeks later, Oikawa asks if he wants to go on one last adventure. 

* * *

  
  


Two weeks later, Oikawa stops looking at people like he wants to lay them flat on the ground and demand they give up their secrets. He looks—peaceful, almost. The way he would when he and Hajime had sat side-by-side on weekends and made their way through spotty VHS tapes of _Doraemon_. He hasn’t been this beautiful in years. 

“I am happy,” Oikawa says. He taps his eraser against Hajime’s name, written in shaky kanji at the top of Hajime’s paper. “I’m here. With you.”

He smiles. It’s disgustingly charming, the way he looks up through his eyelashes. He knows what he’s doing. 

“Are you sure,” Hajime says. 

“That I’m here? Yeah, I think so. Should I be pinching myself? I thought I’d let you do the honors, what with your violent tendencies and all—Iwa-chan?”

Hajime’s on his feet, standing over Oikawa and his damp hair and stupid hands and stupid smile. Oikawa Tooru, in all his infinity. The pencil clatters to the ground, forgotten. 

“Tooru,” Hajime says, fists clenched, “are you sure.”

Oikawa swallows. “I—”

“Are you _sure.”_

“Of _course_ I’m sure, Hajime, I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it. Sit back down.”

Hajime kneels beside Oikawa. His stomach turns over. “Do you—”

“Yeah.” Oikawa’s elbow digs into Hajime’s side when he leans into him. Their legs are pressed flush together, Oikawa’s bare thigh turning white from the pressure. “Stop talking.” 

“Okay,” Hajime breathes. 

Oikawa takes his time picking up the pencil. In those seconds, the universe rewrites itself twice. One thing remains: Oikawa Tooru is at its dead center. He is sitting in the throne room of the castle, waiting for the lights to come on. He is no longer pretending that he is lonely. 

“Are you going to kiss me?”

“Do you want me to?”

“Yes,” Oikawa breathes, tipping forward. Hajime catches him by the wrist. Maybe this is all it takes to rewrite the dichotomy of the universe: dim fluorescent lights, half-finished math homework, a body in the closet laid to rest. Oikawa is a natural disaster in the making and he kisses like he’s trying to repurpose the meaning of gravity. 

“Hajime,” he pants against the corner of Hajime’s mouth, “I really, really love you, you know?”

* * *

  
  


Oikawa’s hair dries a half-hour after Hajime kisses him for the first time. His lips are blush-red and he won’t stop smiling, and whenever he leans in again, he squeezes Hajime's hand. 

Happiness is not life’s one guarantee, but they’re here anyway. They’re here, once again, on the precipice of something greater than themselves. They’re here in their six-year-old bodies, in their matching middle school uniforms, in their skinned elbows and skinned knees and open eyes. Under the arched ceiling of the universe, Hajime rediscovers tranquility. 

“What about you, Hajime,” Oikawa whispers into Hajime’s hair. He’s given up on sitting upright, leaning into his bed frame with Hajime sprawled across his lap. Hajime’s face is pressed to the castle in his chest, to his heartbeat. “Are you happy?”

“What kind of question is that,” Hajime mumbles. “‘Course I’m happy.”

Oikawa’s body is a warm, solid weight against Hajime’s own. He does not consider forgiveness. If Oikawa is a castle, well, Hajime and his trebuchet heart will just have to brute-force their way in. 

* * *

  
  


And oh, how the walls will come tumbling down.

**Author's Note:**

> WROTE THIS IN ONE DAY. I AM OFFICIALLY INSANE
> 
> guysguysguysg i have so much going on this week and i blew my one free afternoon writing iwaoi HAPPY and in LOVE and i don't regret anything. they always deserve it. anyway, this is pretty rough and unedited but i wanted to get them out of my system so here you go
> 
> comments/kudos/small dogs with names like brad and chad are unnecessary but cherished nonetheless. if you have a dog named chad please let me know. that's all for today folks, i'll see you around. stay sexy
> 
> (bonus: i've had this [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VEdPCvcOcc&ab_channel=PierreRichard) stuck in my head for the past week and i know the lyrics could work with anyone but it just screams iwaoi in love...also omg i was listening to [this song](https://open.spotify.com/track/1bthBgj2YMcn2w0LBQl5eI?si=kPFXfi4rRLWXgeTgDdNujw) while i was writing this and i think it just fits)


End file.
